Thanks for the information.  Seems you are saying that the Ivy League really
has no choice since it does not have a tournament.  And, if a conference has
only one autobid and also has a tournament that it would be beneficial from
a monetary standpoint to give the tournament more value, so the choice is
not very free. Guess we know the results by now.  Bob Hamilton
-----Original Message-----
From: Rita-Ann Monde <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Sunday, March 18, 2007 2:16 PM
Subject: Re: Starting the Bitching Early


>I believe each league has the choice on how to award the autobid.
>However, all the hockey conferences opt to have the money making(?)
>end of the season conference tournament. I think a conference can
>decide to forego the conference tourney and give the bid to the RS
>wiinner.
>
>In basketball, the Ivy League is the only one to award the autobid to
>the regular season conference champion. However, there are rumblings
>that the powers that be in IVY athletics are considering a squeakball
>tourney (http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2007/writers/seth_davis/
>02/22/hoop.thoughts/index.html). Egads!
>
>Rita-Ann Monde
>Trinity College 1991
>Cornell University 2000
>
>
>
>On Mar 18, 2007, at 1:57 PM, Dr. Bob Hamilton wrote:
>
>> Seem to me that the champion of a season of league play and
>> selecting teams
>> for a best tournament.that can be fielded are quite different.  A
>> season of
>> play based a conference method for game scheduling is quite
>> different, it
>> seems to me, from finding the teams at the end of the season that
>> would make
>> the best possible tournament for Division 1 college hockey fans.
>> Seems that
>> is what would be more important in a post-season tournament selection
>> process than making it totally on play that happened throughout the
>> season
>> with no consideration of current events.  That this is far from
>> nonsense
>> except in a viewpoint that does not want to recognize these current
>> events.
>> It is still mostly about the results of games but does not ignore the
>> reality of recent significant changes in circumstances.  The
>> autobid coming
>> from the league tournament gives consideration to current
>> performance since
>> a hot team can win the tournament and be an autobid.  Maybe that is
>> the only
>> "adjustment" that is needed but it does allow for something other
>> than games
>> played throughout the season to determine the result.  Seems by the
>> logic
>> presented, that it is nonsense.to give the NCAA bid to the
>> tournament champ
>> instead of the league champ.
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: John T Whelan <[log in to unmask]>
>> To: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
>> Date: Sunday, March 18, 2007 1:21 PM
>> Subject: Re: Starting the Bitching Early
>>
>>
>>> On Sun, 18 Mar 2007, Dr. Bob Hamilton wrote:
>>>
>>>> Seems they are still missing something.  Let's take an extreme
>>>> case where
>> a
>>>> major player is injured and cannot play in the tournaments.  And
>>>> to make
>> it
>>>> even more interesting, what if the injury happens in the last
>>>> game of the
>>>> season where the team loses the tournament championship and yet
>>>> qualifies
>> on
>>>> the current PWR.  Or what if they win and a post-game brouhaha
>>>> leads to
>>>> significant DQ's, it seems they would still be in the regionals.
>>>> These
>> are,
>>>> of course, extreme examples but it does get at the importance of
>>>> looking
>> at
>>>> recent performance.
>>>
>>> That's exactly the sort of nonsense that's considered in the seeding
>>> of the basketball tournament.  Tournament seeding should reflect the
>>> position each team has earned through the results of their games, not
>>> some expected level of performance in the tournament.  Are the
>>> standings of an individual league adjusted at the end of the season
>>> based on player injuries etc?
>>>
>>> The NCAA never did that for hockey, although they did once have a
>>> criterion that paid more attention to recent games.  But still only
>>> game results.
>>>
>>>> Seems this is different from strength of schedule.
>>>
>>> It's completely different.  The point is that what the NCAA used
>>> to do
>>> was just look at each team's winning percentage in their last 16
>>> or 20
>>> games.  But two teams may have played very different schedules in
>>> those games, and going 13-2-1 in Atlantic Hockey is not necessarily a
>>> better performance than going 11-4-1 in the WCHA.  (This is also true
>>> in the "vs TUC" criterion, as was just pointed out, but at least
>>> there's some selection of team strengths.)
>>>
>>> Now, we did once propose a system to adjust for this in the various
>>> criteria:
>>>
>>> http://slack.net/~whelan/tbrw/tbrw.cgi?kpairwise
>>>
>>> John Whelan
>>> Cornell '91